'And this is what the product is all about,' declares [John Garrard] at the end of Make and Break, swinging round the final section of his firm's wall system and revealing a corpse on the other side.
Death stalks Frayn's characters as they play out their good commercial roles against a lurid trade-fair background, punctuated by the faint menace of exploding terrorist bombs 'out there' in the city of Frankfurt…. At the centre of the frenzy is the managing director, John Garrard …, who unlike the rest of his staff, cannot shed his professional identity and the accompanying turn of mind, even for a moment. This is a brain attempting to work like a computer: absorb maximum data, process, place in order of priority, issue programme of action. He questions his staff about their private lives (on the principle that if a man has two heads, why talk to only one), their religious views and their artistic preferences with the same allconsuming efficiency he applies to his business proper. Presumably he does the same to his wife, children, as they have all gone into headlong flight out of his life. The seduction of his partner's secretary … is carried out with an efficiency that is part idle curiosity and part single-mindedness (it certainly isn't rapacious lust), and culminates in a masterly piece of expressionistic theatre. (pp. 23-4)
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